Protecting the forests of the Daliang Shan region in Sichuan, China

The logging plans for the Daliang Shan region of Sichuan predicted the disappearance within two decades of virtually all primary forest habitat of the Sichuan hill-partridge and extinction seemed inevitable. At this time, WPA and the Sichuan Forestry Department were already in the field, ascertaining the best areas for the partridge. Soon after, catastrophic flooding of the lower Yangtze River led the Chinese government to introduce a logging ban in the upper Yangtze basin, including the Daliang Shan region.

This natural disaster opened a door for long-term conservation of the Sichuan hill-partridge and its habitat, and a few years later the first nature reserve exclusively covering broadleaf primary forest in the area was established at Laojunshan. With long-term financial and technical support from Chester Zoo, two more reserves have been created, at Mamize and at Heizhugou.

Chester Zoo support has allowed community projects to be set up in the reserves and benefits are provided for local people linked to wildlife protection. This is particularly apparent at Mamize, where the working relationship between the reserve managers and local people is excellent. Villagers often assist with duties such as helping to police and control bamboo shoot collection in the reserve, the overall result of this being a reduction in poaching and in disturbance during the partridge’s breeding season, and an expansion of habitat as previously logged areas are replanted. This ultimately benefits all wildlife, including Galliformes. As well as the Sichuan hill-partridge, the reserves also contain important populations of Lady Amherst’s pheasant, Temminck’s tragopan, Chinese bamboo-partridge and silver pheasant.

The WPA Galliformes monitoring project, funded by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, is helping to evaluate the effectiveness of reserve support and ensure that future measures provide suitable protection. WPA also aims to use the Galliformes in this area as indicator species for the reserves. Put simply, how much does the number of pheasants tells us about the quality of forest habitats and numbers of other species? This will aid in guiding future management. There are early signs that Sichuan Hill-partridges have already increased at Laojunshan. The reserves are currently protected at a provincial-level, but it is hoped that they will soon become protected at a national-level, particularly as the Daliang Shan region has been identified as part of one of the 25 ‘biodiversity hotspots’ in the world.